France 8

Listen to France 8, a 22-year-old woman from Paris, France. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples.  IDEA is a free resource;  please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1978

PLACE OF BIRTH: Paris, France

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: French (father from Poland; mother from Algeria)

OCCUPATION: student, foreign-language assistant

EDUCATION: She was attending college, at the Sorbonne, at the time of this interview.

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

She has spent a year at Western Maryland College, in Maryland, United States, as part of her education at the Sorbonne.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Elizabeth van den Berg

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I live in Paris; I have 22 years old. I have a brother, he’s 19, he’s really, really awful, very happy to be there far, far from here. I go back in Paris in two days, so I’m very happy. What struck me when I came to the United States is the space. There is so much space, like only a parking space is so huge, like, compared to the French, well it’s very, it’s amazing. Even the sky is so big, like, compared to France, the cities, the house. Everything seems to be possible here, like, you can put your house somewhere and just constructed it and it’s okay, and everybody’s happy, and nobody comes to disturb you like “Wha, what are you doing?” Everybody’s so available; I know that in France, for example, if you want an information, a piece of information and you call to an office around 12, like12 noon, there is nobody, or if you want, if you find someone, “Oh, I’m sorry Robert is not here, he can’t help you. You have to come back tomorrow or to call between stupid hours like between 10:15 in the morning and eleven and then two and three in the afternoon or a-.” It’s very bureaucratic. Here I was very surprised. If you need something, they give you the paper. You have no so much paper to sign; there is no contract; everything is based more on trust relation. That’s very nice.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Elizabeth van den Berg

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Very noticeable in her dialect are the dropped “h” sounds in “happy” (“appy”), “herself” (“erself”), “hurry” (“urry”), etc. Voiceless “th” usually transforms to “s” (“with” becomes “wis”), and the voiced “th” becomes “z” (“this” becomes “zis”).

COMMENTARY BY: Elizabeth van den Berg

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/2000

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.